


Dysfunction

by hellkitty



Category: RoboCop (2014), RoboCop - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Dark, Disturbing Themes, F/M, Married Sex, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-24
Updated: 2014-02-24
Packaged: 2018-01-13 16:02:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1232584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>HAHAHAHwhoops. So, remember that 'I will write porn of this canon to the great embarrassment of all' thing? Done and DONE. It came out a bit more disturbing than I'd intended and is probably not in the least 'hot', because, also, as you know, I suck at human porn.  (Or maybe you don't know that, in which case, now you do!). Kind of a disturbing take on phantom limb syndrome in a really not funny way.</p><p>Alex/Clara, and if you've got your slash goggles on real tight, you can probably see some Alex/Dennett, too.  </p><p>Suggested listening: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGALJwdBOX4"> VNV Nation "Legion"</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Dysfunction

 

_The warm light falls across Clara's bare skin, the swells of her breasts hidden under the architecture of her bra, her belly a confluence of curved lines, her ribs dipping into her waist, the pale line of the scar from the C-section. He loves ever curve of her, even that one, especially that one, as he slides his way down off her, off the edge of the bed, breathing in the scent of her: the lotion she used, and under it, the warm healthy, sexy as fuck scent of woman._

_His hands follow his mouth, skimming over her breasts, and his thumbs could feel the little hardnesses of her nipples through the thin fabric, feel the way her back arched up into his touch as he pushes her thighs open with his elbows, drawing her knees closer to the edge of the bed._

_"Alex," she breathes, one hand tangling with his, hesitant, almost, like he hadn't kissed every inch of her body in their time together. Jack was always about new women, the thrill of learning a new woman's body, her responses, the unknown territory, but Alex didn't want anything more than this: familiar and beloved, and his._

_"Clara," he mimicked her breathy tone, grinning, his mouth nipping along the upper edge of her lacy panties, their black scallops contrasting with her butter-pale skin. He could smell her now, that sweet-salty musk, as her thighs tremble, muscles jumping taut under skin that was some kind of pale, rich satin. The panties feel strangely harsh, a black, regular mesh that was, right now, very much in the way. "Want me to stop?" He pushes the words against her, against the rise of her sex, the heat of his breath matching, mingling, with the heat of her desire._

_"Oh god no!" she almost chokes, the hand in his turning into an almost frantic claw. She'd always complained about stubble, so he'd shaved, just for this, his chin, his cheek, smooth against her bare skin._

_"Good answer," he murmurs, moving his free hand to slide up her thigh, under the hem of the panties, pushing them aside...._

 

***

Alex jerked, and the golden light disappeared in a blink, like a blackout. He shook his head, hearing a soft protesting whine at the movement, his eyes registering only darkness, his ears the hum of monitors, and memory tore through the last of the pleasant, tingling heat like a rusty blade: the bomb, the last year, everything that stood between that dream and now.

He wasn't with Clara. He was here, on his cradle in Norton's lab, and the monitors were recording, in bright damning evidence, the chemical spikes in his brain, which was really all that was left of him. He wasn't with Clara, and he never would be again, and that weight was heavier than the black metallic weight of the rest of his body settling itself cold and unmoving against his consciousness.

He wanted to fall back asleep, fall back into that dream, bright and beautiful and when he was whole, reaching out as he closed his eyes, trying to find a silver thread back to that.

 

***

He watched Kim scan the night's feeds with a kind of trepidation, his HUD registering that she noticed the spike. Alex could feel his breath catch in his throat, waiting, dreading the inevitable question, feeling raw and exhausted. The rest of the night had been spotty with sleep, picodreams he never could get to hold still, like pictures too pixellated to see, leaving him with an uneasy, unsettled cloud in his head.

She said nothing, not to him, nor to Norton, beyond the usual, "how are we feeling today?" she asked every morning.

Maybe it was nothing, he thought. Maybe he'd had these sorts of neural activity spikes before, part of usual sleep. Maybe, he though, it was a good thing, the sign of normal, healthy sleep. Didn't you only dream in REM sleep? Maybe that was it. Maybe he was just normally too deep under to remember his dreams, till last night.

"Fine," he said, finally, and she gave her regular, pleasant nod, before releasing controls, returning his body to himself, activating his control circuitry, so he could move again.

***

_God damn, she's beautiful, he thinks, the spun gold of her hair spilling over her shoulders, feathering against her skin in ways that just begged to be touched. She's beautiful and she's mine and she's moving over him in a slow tease, hips rocking over his in a tempo almost designed to be a kind of delicious, sweet torture. He feels her thighs slide against his hips, the light casting her bare breasts into shapes of light and shadow, throwing crescents against her ribcage._

_He feels himself inside her, wetness and heat and the little tight squeeze from her thigh muscles as she moves against him, and the soft curve of her ass against the tops of his thighs. She leans forward, hands coming to rest on his shoulders, bracing herself against him, pausing just long enough for that hard knot of lust in his belly to writhe, goading him to move._

_He waits it out, knowing she’s reading his need scrawled on his face, on the way his shoulders twitch, fighting movement, knowing she’s loving it, the way her full mouth curves into a mischievous smile._

_Clara licks her lips, which he'd do just about anything to kiss right now. Well, anything that wouldn't stop this from happening, from letting her take control, but for a moment he lets himself become entranced by them, the fullness and color of them, the sheen from where her tongue passed._

_She moves faster now, more insistent, her knees tight against his ribs, and he can feel the swell of her belly against his, stirring the thin trail of hair across his stomach, her breasts swaying with her forward lean, taking on the fluid flow of movement and gravity._

_“You can touch, if you want,” she says, her voice like a warm liquid spreading over him, sweet and thick with promise._

_“I do want.” In case it wasn’t evident enough, and he winks at her, though what his hands really want is to clutch her hips, drive her against him, leave this maddening, tantalizing tempo for something more insistent, now, demanding._

_He resists, his hands moving instead up her thighs, feeling the muscles shift under the skin, only pausing at her hips to glide over the swell and dip into her waist, reaching almost reverently for her breasts, feeling their warmth and weight and fullness against him._

_Her face changes, abruptly, and she sits up, sits back, taking her body away from his needy hands, her mouth shifting into something slack and horrified, her eyes widening, pupils constricting as though trying to flee from what they were seeing._

_And he feels it, suddenly, his body changed in an instant, limbs charring away to ash in some invisible wind that sweeps through the room, and what should have been a phosphorous heat feels cold instead, the gaping, empty cold of absence._

***

David was cuing up the highlights of the latest Redwings game. Clara stepped closer, one hand resting on his metal forearm. “Are they treating you well, Alex?”

“Yeah. Fine. I’m good.”

“Are you sure?” He could feel her eyes studying him, trying to read his face, relearn his expressions. “You look, I don’t know. Tired.”

He shrugged it off. “Just some bad dreams, that’s all.”

“Bad dreams.” He could tell she wanted to ask. He didn’t want to tell her.

“Weird dreams, really.” Because who was going to call dreams where you have sex with your beautiful wife ‘bad’? “It’s nothing.” Stupid shit, he told himself, and the proof of it was right here, Clara, with her hand on his arm, her face upturned, concern in her eyes. She saw him, Alex.  The man she married, the man she loved. Not a machine, not a pathetic, maimed, grotesque half-man, a twisted lump of poorly cooked meat.

Stupid fucking dreams, he told himself, and bent down, abruptly, for a kiss, to blast away the last of the doubt from the shadowy corners of his mind.

But her lips felt cold against his, and he felt her mouth go stiff, lips pulled into a grimace, as she turned her head away.

***

_He even loves her this way, hands and knees on the rumpled sheets of the bed, the entire length of her back in front of him, her spine forming a sensuous valley in her flesh, spreading out toward the fullness of her ass, that he can’t keep his hands off of even as he’s pushing himself into her. The only downside is he can’t see her face, but he can hear her breathe, the sharp, intense suck of air as he slides himself home inside her from behind, his thighs meeting the backs of hers, pausing for a moment just to let them both feel it, the heat of their bodies against each other, his hardness, her wetness, how much they wanted each other._

_He’s never been good with words, but this…this is where he feels comfortable, this is where he knows she knows how much he feels for her._

_“Please,” she whimpers, her hips giving a little twitch back against his, hinting at what she wanted._

_He gives a playful growl, hands locking on her hips, jerking them back against his, driving him inside her, building a hard, abrupt tempo—fast in and slower out, driving and insistent._

_He watches her hands clutch at the sheets, bunching the fabric, her knuckles almost white, the way her shoulders shift, taking the force of his thrusts, pushing back against him, her need as great as his._

_He wants to see her face: it’s the only thing that’s missing here. He wants to see her mouth as she moans, her eyes wide and glistening with desire, for him, for his body, for what they are when they’re together._

_His right hand stays on her hips, his left reaching forward, to sweep the blonde fall of hair back, away from her cheek. She turns into the touch, the light hand caressing the smooth skin of her cheekbone, the line of her jaw, and for a moment, it’s perfection, his body almost jolting off tempo from the sudden rush of lust._

_More. He wants more, and the hand shifts to her hair, the back of her head, knuckles bunching in its silky golden strands, his thrusts more insistent, their bodies meeting in fierce slaps of skin on skin. “Jesus god, you’re beautiful,” he says, but his voice is raspy and strange, and his hand, suddenly, tangled in her hair is black and hard and chitonous, pressing almost at the skull beneath as the arm—his arm, black and metal—pulls her up, pulls her back, till she’s standing on her knees, hands futilely reaching for her hair, and the hot moans from her throat change to cries of pain, because he’s still driving into her, still slamming inside her as hard and desperately as he can, like a piston, a machine and nothing but, pushing forward blindly into a white climax of rushing ecstasy, even as he hears her cry out, “Alex! You’re hurting me!”_

***

Alex awoke, shaking, despite the fact his control circuitry was turned off. His entire body—metal and all—was throbbing, burningly alive, his head dizzy and spinning with as much pleasure as the cold seed of horror somewhere in his belly, a collision of impossible opposites, making him sick to a stomach he no longer had. 

He didn’t even try to fall back asleep this time, trying to force himself awake, trying to gather as much time as he could between that….horror and now, like some sort of bolster or wall to hide from himself.

***

“Alex.”

He could tell from Norton’s tone of voice that this was a discussion he did not want to be having. He didn’t even need to open his eyes, but he did, and sure enough, he could see the clearscreen in Norton’s hand, the readouts of his neurochemicals from last night.

It was impossible, unfortunately, to pretend-sleep when someone has a readout of your beta brainwaves in realtime in his hands, so Alex knew better than to try. “Dr Norton.” Like that wasn’t suspicious, the sudden wary flat tone.

“Do you want to talk about last night?”

“No.” No. Last night was the last thing he wanted to talk about. Ever. To anyone.

Norton sighed, holding up the screen. “We’ve had some…anomalous readings.” He shifted, putting the clearscreen down. “Alex, we’re in uncharted territory here, with you. We need to know if something’s wrong. To help you.”

To help. Right.

Alex’s eyes flicked to Kim, where she was behind the bank of monitors, then back to Norton, shaking his head.

Norton wasn’t stupid. “Dr Kim, if you could give us a few minutes?”

She looked up, surprised, but rose immediately, moving toward the door. “I’ll get you some coffee, Dr Norton.”

Norton nodded. “That’ll be fine.” Anything to give them a moment’s illusion of privacy. He waited till the door shut behind her, turning back to Alex on his cradle. “You’ve been having dreams.”

“Yeah.” Dreams. He’d admit to that much. Especially since the brainwaves would show it.

“They upset you.”

Alex felt the flare of anger even before he saw the spike on the clearscreen. He hated the prying, hated having his own body give him away. His mouth pulled flat for a long moment, the next ‘yeah’ almost scorching his throat.

Norton’s shoulders sagged, creasing across his labcoat. “Alex. I want to help. I can help. But you have to talk to me.”

“Nothing to talk about.”

Norton picked up the clearscreen again, swiping it back to a readout, pointing out a multicolored spike in the graph. “Dopamine, massive release, lesser release, serotonin and prolactin. This, adrenaline. Noradrenaline.” He coughed. “Neurochemical indicators of sexual orgasm.”

“Nothing to talk about,” Alex repeated, bluntly, blindly, feeling childish and petty and humiliated.

Norton just tilted his head, looking somehow sad, saying nothing.

“Look,” Alex said, abruptly, anything to fill the silence. “It’s not a thing that can happen. I don’t even have a goddam dick.”

“I know,” Norton said. “And I’m sorry.”

“Sorry.” Alex fought the cradle for a moment, agitated, but its restraints hadn’t been released yet. “You’re sorry.” All the horror came crashing back onto him, how very little there was of him left. And he knew OmniCorp’s logic by now: why would they salvage that, anyway, from the charred ruin of his body? Robot with a dick. Christ. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling a sudden stinging dampness in his eyes, traitorous and weak.

He heard footsteps, receding, and felt the sudden thunking of the magnaclamps releasing his limbs: Norton freeing him to move. His breath seemed to hiccup in his lungs, and he squeezed his eyes shut harder. Fucking goddam pathetic. Can’t even move without someone’s permission. Can be shut down with a code. Helpless, vulnerable, reliant. Everything he never wanted to be.

Alex stepped from the cradle, because it was too much, too helpless just…lying there like that, pacing around the small space like a caged animal. Even his movements were abhorrent: the silky glide of servomotors, the steady whirring of the gimbals keeping his balance, seemed to scream at every step unnatural, unnatural, unnatural.

He was aware of Norton watching, from behind the consoles, just watching, waiting him out. “Alex.”

“Don’t you fucking ‘Alex’ me!” He whirled, hands gripping the tops of the consoles, one flesh, one steel. “I’m not Alex anymore. He died. Or…he should have died.” He wouldn’t have these memories, but he wouldn’t be tainting them, ruining them with whatever darkness was clouding his brain. He squeezed his hands, and he felt the left one crush the top of the monitor, felt the glass crackle, the plastic yield with a sudden snap. The hand he’d dreamed of hauling Clara up by her hair, the hand that had hurt her.

He dropped to one knee, hard and fast, abrupt enough to dent the tile, and Norton came around in an instant, faster than Alex thought he could move, and he felt the other’s hands on his shoulders. He ducked his head down, staring unseeing at the contours of black, sleek and dangerous, of his thigh, his knee. “She turned away,” he said, his voice broken. “When I kissed her. She turned away.” It was harder to admit than the dreams: those weren’t real, those weren’t true, and it felt like he was tearing away something that had rooted deep into his heart with every syllable.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” Norton said, the words barely audible, a breathy confession. “I’m so sorry.” What else could he say? And Alex knew, he could feel, that Norton wished he had a cure for this, wished he had a fix, something permanent, something real, something beyond chemical manipulation, which turned him into a thing, a machine. 

Alex rocked forward, and he found himself leaning on Norton, face buried in the starch-white of the labcoat, arms around his shoulders. He could kill Norton with half a thought, if he wanted, for doing this to him, for making him into what he was, but he found himself, instead, sobbing in heavy, half-airless heaves against him, clinging like a child, crying for everything he’d lost, everything he’d never have, never be, again.


End file.
